There are some issues about AI and here is a proposal how to solve them. What do you think, will this work?
1. AI doesn't enchant his troops.
2. AI chooses unoptimal places for settlements.
3. Human players almost every time take Enchanters (to have Scrying pool) while AIs may not have them.
Why does this happen?
City spells that enchant units are more expensive than econimic city enchamntement spells and have lewer priority. Thus Enchanted hammers has 120 priority and requires only 10 mana to cast, but Heart of Fire has abot 15 priority and 100 mana to cast.
Number of essence slots is short. Each slot is expensive and human players optimise their usage to maximum. At the start of the game players enchant cities with economic bonuses, later - with unit enchantments. Poor AI just enchants with what he has at the start and lives with that till his death.
What can be done?
At first, Priorities should be set properly. Out of all city spells the most combat effective is Heart of Fire, then I would name Enchanted Hammers, Aura of Might, Inspiration, Aura of Grace, Sovereign's Call... etc.
Then, all spells should have adequate cost... abot 20-30 mana each, no more, otherwise AI will cast cheap spells and leave others behind.
Then, let cities more essence slots. For example, what do you think if 2 level settlement would add +1 essence slot. Higher levels of settlements would add +1 slot more. So maximum 5 level settlement will give +4 essence slots.
Thus maximum player may have: 3 essence from terrain, +1 from Oracle, +1 from Scrying pool, +4 from 5 level settlement. Total is 9.
With 9 essence slots AI has great chances to enchant his cities with unit enchantment spells especially when we changed priorities.
With 9 essence slots AI has all chances to enchant a city with economic spells which will help to develop this city. Even is a city is set on no-essence tile, it still has option to have 1-6 essence.
With 9 essence slots human players may reconsider to take Enchanters trait every time.
But there is a problem: unit enchantment spells add bonuses equal to the number of essence slots. So these bonuses should be modified and add fixed values, for example just +2 to fire attack, +2 to defence, +2 to initiative etc.
Do you think this will help AI? At least partially?